The Bourne Ultimatum Review

Jason Bourne is coming home, despite the efforts of the CIA, which manages to stretch the limits of believability at both ends of the spectrum in the third installment of this trilogy. The bad guys are incredibly efficient with their omnipresent surveillance, unlimited resources, and perfect contingency plans. Except when they're not. Now I'm no security expert, but if I was building a secret CIA counterterrorism headquarters in a New York City office building, I might consider, oh I don't know... Curtains on the windows? I mean, not that anyone might want to, you know, spy on the building through binoculars or something. But hey, what do I know.

Anyway, Matt Damon is solid as strong-silent-type Jason Bourne as he digs into his buried memories. The villains are reasonably believable, although Joan Allen's talents are mostly wasted in a role that smacks of stereotyping (why does the one woman agent have to be the one who's idealistic and who wants to talk to Bourne rather than killing him? The film would have been more interesting if they'd gender-reversed the two main CIA agent roles). 

In general, the film doesn't waste much time on dialogue, which is mostly fine. The action sequences are excellent. Good realistic fight scenes, and chases featuring some great stunt work, even as they stretch the realism a bit. 

One of the strengths of the Bourne series is that all of the scenes are shot on location. The photography is awesome and it gives the films a great sense of flavor. A sequence in Tangiers particularly stands out. 

The ending is a reasonably, though not terribly surprising conclusion to the trilogy. The whole thing is decent fun if you don't try to think about it too much.